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Thursday, January 24, 2013

Dr Njogu Bah, minister of presidential affairs, and
secretary general and head of civil services has referred to the European Union
as crazy guys for imposing their 17-point demand on The Gambia government which
he said they (the EU) don’t have the moral authority to do.

“Looking at the EU’s submission, we find it very
insulting, to say the least; lack of respect to our independence and
sovereignty,” Dr Bah said on Monday, during an extra-ordinary session of the
National Assembly, convened for parliamentarians to discuss the demands of the
EU to The Gambia government.

The EU has presented a 17-point demand to The Gambia
government in which it is requesting the government to revise the portion of
the Criminal Code that allows for prosecution on the charges of sedition,
libel, false publication to a public servant within 6 months; revise laws on
freedom of expression and media regulations within 24 months; review the death
penalty by the National Assembly within 12 months, and review the provision of
the death penalty in the element of the Criminal Code and other laws for most
serious crimes within six months.

Dr Njogu Bah said the EU does not have the moral
authority to demand that the Gambia government implement these changes in the
laws.

“The laws of The Gambia are adequate as they are,”
he says.

According to him, whatever action taken here (in The
Gambia by the government), are taken within the dictates of the laws.

“They [the EU] have their own laws, but we can pinpoint
many flaws in their system, they are not perfect and that is clear to all of
us; in fact there is no perfect system in the world,” Dr Bah said.

By telling the government to implement these
changes, the presidential affairs minister said the EU is trying to bring chaos
and anarchy into the country.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

The APRC and nominated members of the National Assembly
have unanimously claimed that The Gambia is ready and willing to forgo the
millions of Euro donated to the government by the European Union than to
implement the 17-point reforms the EU demanded the government implement.

One after the other, the parliamentarians on Monday,
during an extraordinary session of the National Assembly, strongly condemned
the EU.

For them, the EU already knew that the government “will
not accept” to implement the 17-point demand, so in that case they can cut aids
to the government, but the government is ready to weather the storm.

The extraordinary session was convened for the parliamentarians
to discuss the demands of the EU to The Gambia government.

In a 17-point demand presented to The Gambia
government, which are strongly condemned and rejected by President Jammeh
forthrightly, the EU demanded the Gambia government to undertake some reforms in
order to improve the country’s governance and human rights situations.

Among the
reforms they are demanding from the government are the upholding of
moratorium on the death penalty with immediate effect, revision of laws on
freedom of expression and media regulations within 24 months, provision of
information regarding the recent executions, including location of burial to
the families.

“Gambia is willing to forgo any kind of aids than to
implement these kinds of demands,” said Fabakary Tombong Jatta, member for
Serrekunda East and majority leader.

He said the government will be glad to get the EU funds
with respect and dignity, but not under servitude, or slave-master relationship,
though he acknowledged that the EU contributes to the socio-economic
development of the country.

These kinds of things are done with a pre-conceived
mind, Hon. Tombong Jatta says, adding that the EU did this so that if the
government refuses, they can take the next action.

The liquidation of Prime Bank Gambia has caused some general panic and
confusion in the banking industry, as customers of both the bank and other
banks in the country are afraid that such a big bank is wrapping up at this
point in time.

The bank has been the second to close down in two years.

The Central Bank of The Gambia on Tuesday
issued a press release stating that Prime Bank is closing down its operations
in the country because its parent company, Societe General de Baque Liban, has
opted to divest its subsidiary in The Gambia, hence the decision not to augment
the bank’s capital to the required minimum capital of D200 million.

Prime Bank is sufficiently liquid to meet
its obligations to depositors, other creditors and any other person entitled to
funds or property thereof.

The customers, who are compelled to withdraw their savings from the
bank, have raised concerns over the bank’s closure.

“I was shocked when I hear this sad news on the television. It has been
my preferred bank but we the customers are left with no other choice except to
withdraw our savings,” says one of the bank’s customers who spoke on condition
of anonymity, after taking her deposits from the bank.

Prime Bank is the second financial
institution in the banking industry to liquidate, after Oceanic Bank also
failed to meet the minimum capital requirement of D150 million in 2010.

“Now which bank is going to close next,” Ousman
Jammeh, a customer of one of the local banks in the country, asked
rhetorically, while expressing concern over the closure of Prime Bank, a bank
he said one of his friend was banking with.

All the security apparatus in The Gambia - the army,
the police including the police intervention unit, and the fire and rescue
services – have been stopped from marrying each other.

A security source has told this paper that the
Ministry of Interior has issued a circular to all the national security
agencies banning all officers of the same security unit from marrying each
other.

The public relations officers of the Gambia Fire and
Rescue Services and the Gambia Armed Forces have confirmed the new development,
although the Police could not be reached for their comments.

According to the security source, the reason for such
a move is “to maintain discipline and efficiency at work in the security.”

The source said, for instance, if a female officer
does anything wrong or acts contrary to rules and norms of the security
apparatus, effective disciplinary actions will hardly be taken against that
officer if she happens to be the wife of the senior officer in charge of that
station or guard post.

And if other senior officers happen to effect
disciplinary actions on the wife, it hardly goes down well with the husband and
could bring enmity between the husband and the officer(s) who effect the
punishment.

Again, the source said, there is likelihood that the
wife will be reluctant to take orders from his husband by virtue of their
relationship.

However, previously officers of all other security
units were allowed to marry from within the same unit except officers of the Fire
and Rescue Services who have been maintaining the colonial law.

In a similar vein, as part of the same circular from
the Ministry of Interior, henceforth married female officers are now prohibited
from getting pregnant before the first two years of their recruitment into the
security unit.

It is said this is done to make the female officers
to work for at least two years to get more experience before getting pregnant “because
when you are pregnant as an officer, you cannot work actively and security needs
activeness”.

President Yahya Jammeh has used his
executive powers to change the official working days and hours of The Gambia from
five to four in a week and increased working hours from 8 to 10.

A news release by the state television,
GRTS, on Friday night stated that with effect from February 1, 2013 official
working days in The Gambia will be reduced from five to four, Monday through
Thursday, and working hours will increase from eight to ten; that is from 8am
to 6pm.

Presently, official working days in the
country are from Monday to Friday, and hours from 8am to 4pm for Monday through
Thursday, and 8am to 12.30am for Friday.

When effected, The Gambia will be among
countries in the world with a mandatory four-day working week.

As a result, the
country will be shutting down for a whole day while most parts of the world
continue in active business and financial transactions.

However, the Office of the President has
particularly singled out that banks in the country can operate on Saturdays to
compensate them for the lost Fridays they will not be working.

Well, as it is now, banks in the country
operate from Monday to Saturday.

The reason advanced by the Office of the
President for this sudden move is that when the changes are effected, Friday will
be a rest day for people of The Gambia and for Muslims to worship Allah.

The new schedule will also allow people
of the country to have more time to do their agricultural work as part of President
Jammeh’s call for Gambians to go back to the land to ‘grow what you eat and eat
what you grow’.

Utah,
one of the states in America, in recent past experimented a four-day workweek
but it was later abandoned because it was not saving as much money as hoped for
and that residents were complaining about not having access to services on
Fridays.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Gambia could lose a lot of million Euros from
its main donor, the European Union, as a result of President Jammeh’s outright rejection
of the governance reforms that they, the EU, has demanded The Gambia government
to undertake in order to improve the country’s governance and human rights
situations.

The European Union has presented a 17-point demand
to The Gambia government which are strongly condemned and rejected by President
Jammeh forthrightly.The EU has also
scheduled a meeting - EU Article 8 Intensified Political -
with
the government slated
for 11th January 2013 during which the
demands are to be discussed.

In a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, President Jammeh denounced
and rubbished all the demands by the EU saying that there is no need to meet with the EU
because “none of their demands is subject for discussion”.

The EU says it demands
are prompted by the significant deterioration in the human rights situation in
The Gambia in recent months, notably the execution of nine death row inmates,
the forced closure of independent radio stations and newspapers, the trial
against persons on the basis of their sexual orientation and the arbitrary
arrest and detention of journalists and human rights defenders.

Among the reforms
that they are demanding from the government are: the upholding of
moratorium on the death penalty with immediate effect, revision of laws on
freedom of expression and media regulations within 24 months, provision of
information regarding the recent executions, including location of burial to
the families.[See below the story all the 17-point demand
of the EU.]

However, the strong refusal of President Jammeh of
these reforms could have some chilling effects on the government and The Gambia
as a whole because the EU is the country’s main donor and it is an open secret
that most or all the aids by the multilateral agencies are tied to some conditions
like the ones demanded by the EU to The Gambia.

For instance, the EU has cut financial aid to Kabul
due to inefficiency and lack of progress in governance and justice system
reforms in Afghanistan.

Again, it
has cut aids to Bulgaria due to the government’s little progress in the fight
against corruption and organized crime in the country.

So could
it also cut aids to The
Gambia for Jammeh’s refusal to improve the governance and human right situation
in the country?It
is worth noting that human rights, democracy and the rule of law are core values for the EU and these determines to a large
extend the Union’s external relationspolicy and support to
any country.

The Gambia continues to benefit millions of Euros
donation from the EU in form of projects in different areas like
infrastructure, rural development, food security, climate change, water and sanitation
all of which continue to positively touch the lives of thousands of Gambians
both in rural and urban areas.

For instance, the country is benefiting a lot under
the 10th European Development Fund (EDF),
which is EU’s main instrument for providing development aid in the African,
Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and the overseas countries and
territories (OCTs).Under the 10th
EDF, the EU is assisting The Gambia government to address the key issues that
are hampering economic and social development.

For the period 2008-2013 (10th EDF), €70.6
million was allocated to The Gambia with two priority intervention sectors: transport as a focal sector, with a broader emphasis on
infrastructure and regional interconnectivity, and governance, in
order to help the government in undertaking reforms at the macroeconomic level
as well as in the judiciary.

The complementary objectives of the 10th EDF Country
Strategy for The Gambia is reforming and improving governance, human rights and
the rule of law situation in the Gambia and which areas the government is not
even entertaining the least of reforms.

As for now, efforts to get to get comment from the
European Union office in Banjul, as to what next after President Jammeh rubbishes
their demands, proved unproductive.However, we wait and see the official position to be taken by the Union.

Mr Min said the initiative to build and offer playground equipments
- such as swings, climbing-frame,and seesaws
- to various schools in The Gambia came after visiting the country in
2010.

“Once back in Holland it became very clear that children in
Holland have little to worry about, they own a lot of stuff they do not even
really need,” Mr Min said while noting that children in the Gambia most of the
time do not even have the essential.

Other than a game of football on a dusty field, there is no real
possibility for entertainment, he observed.

It is in cognizant of this that Mr Min made some
plan and drawings of various playground toys, modeled after Dutch example and
decided to travel to The Gambia again.
This time he was armed with some necessary documents to start a project
to create more fun for the schoolchildren.

This is how Gambia
Speelt Mee started in Gambia with its slogan "Together we make it a little
more fun". Mr Min said together with other sponsors, those who made some financial
contribution towards the project, the lives of many schoolchildren in the
country are “a little better” now.
Personally, he said, I consider it a privilege to spend my donation to
realize more fun for the schoolchildren.

“I always feel happy
when the children are happy, and this is my biggest motivation to continue with
the project,” the initiator of Gambia Speelt Mee said.

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About Me

The Publisher of this blog - Lamin Jahateh - is a professional journalist, with many years experience in journalism. Mr. Jahateh attended both national and international trainings on journalism. He is an executive member of many professional organisations, including Network of Journalists Against Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing in West Africa, Freedom House - The Gambia Chapter, Young Journalist Association of the Gambia, etc